Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Yesterday, for a time, Obama administration spokespeople in
the White House and the State Department tried to defend their boss.

As you know, President Obama, in an interview on Vox, denied
that the terrorist attack on the kosher Parisian market was anti-Semitic.

It would have been easier for Jen Psaki and Josh Earnest to
explain that the president had misspoken. But no, they both went to their
respective podia yesterday to pretend that he did not say what he said.

Which made them look like blithering fools.

Trying to defend the great mind of Obama will do that to
you.

Jonathan Chait, surely not an Obama critic, summarizes what
happened at State:

Psaki, asked if Obama
believed the attack on the kosher market was truly random rather than aimed at
Jews, insisted, “There were not all victims of one background or one
nationality.” (In fact, the victims at Hyper Cache were all
Jewish.) Psaki continued to refuse to attribute anti-Semitic intent to the
attacks. “I don’t think we’re going to speak on behalf of French authorities
and what they believe was the situation.” (In fact, the French government has called the
attack on the Hyper Cache market anti-Semitic.)

Over at the White House Josh Earnest got himself tangled in
this colloquy with Jonathan Karl of ABC:

Question: They weren’t killed because they were
in a Jewish deli though, they were in a kosher deli?

Earnest: John, these individuals were not
targeted by name. This is the point.

Question: Not by name, but by religion, were
they not?

Earnest: Well, John, there were people other
than just Jews who were in that deli.

By the end of the day, both Psaki and Earnest tried to end
to their pain by admitting the truth.

Psaki tweeted:

We have always been clear that the attack on the
kosher grocery store was an anti-semitic attack that took the lives of innocent
people.

To which Chait responded that,
evidently, they had not “always been clear”… witness that afternoon’s press
briefings.

Of
course, their view had changed and POTUS had clearly intended to suggest
otherwise. While POTUS is hard at work exculpating Muslims from all actions
taken by Islamist terrorists, he is also running a foreign policy that is
distinctly anti-Israeli. His supposed misstatement was a sign of that policy.

While
Obama refuses to say the least ill word about the Muslim Brotherhood or the
mullahs in Iran, he is always at the ready to trash the prime minister of
Israel.